[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15849-15851]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                    CONCERNS OF ARIZONA CONSTITUENTS

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, when I was in Arizona this weekend, there 
were three things that seemed to come up frequently. One, of course, 
was the Vice Presidential selection of Governor Bush for the Republican 
nomination this fall. The other two subjects were the issues of tax 
relief, and I will briefly discuss that, and missile defense, which I 
will add to the mix, to share some of my constituents' concerns.
  On the matter of Vice President, obviously, that is a subject of 
which Governor Bush will speak today or tomorrow, perhaps. Those on the 
Republican side will be, I am sure, very supportive. If it is former 
Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, I think we will be especially pleased. I 
can't think of anyone who could make a better contribution, not only to 
the ticket but also to a future Republican administration, than Dick 
Cheney. He is from the Presiding Officer's State of Wyoming. He 
represents the kind of values that both the Presiding Officer and 
others from that great State represent: Straightforwardness, plain-
spokenness, honesty, directness, a good strong sense of values, a 
willingness to do the hard work without having to take a lot of the 
credit, traits we treasure in someone such as Senator Paul Coverdell, 
and which Dick Cheney would certainly bring to the job. His experience 
and the great respect which people not only in this country but around 
the world have for Dick Cheney would serve the ticket well. I am not 
attempting to influence Governor Bush in any way, but if his choice is 
Dick Cheney, there couldn't be a better choice.
  Now the other two subjects my constituents raised this past weekend. 
I was astounded that these were the two things they wanted to talk 
about: The tax relief that the Republican Congress continues to pass, 
and pass on to the President; and, secondly, the matter of missile 
defense, which I will get to in a moment.
  I was amused to hear the Democratic candidate for President talk 
about a do-nothing Congress. This is rather strange, considering the 
fact that we have passed over and over and over legislation to help the 
American people, particularly to relieve them of some of the tax burden 
which imposes upon them an extra burden that they need not bear and 
that is inhibitive of future economic growth.
  I am surprised that a Congress which has been so active--and, indeed, 
President Clinton has criticized us for being so active in this 
regard--would be accused then of being ``do-nothing.'' In truth, it is 
not the Congress that isn't willing to do these things; it is the 
Clinton-Gore administration that is unwilling to do these things.
  Let me give some cases in point. We passed the estate tax relief 
about which the Presiding Officer talked. It passed overwhelmingly in 
both bodies, with bipartisan support. But the Clinton-Gore 
administration says it will veto this tax relief. We passed the 
marriage penalty, something that President Clinton said, in his State 
of the Union speech, was a top priority for him. He says he will veto 
that legislation. We can pass all of these things, but we can't get 
them into law unless the President signs them. We are doing our best in 
the Congress. It is now up to the President.
  He did sign one thing that we passed this year. The Social Security 
earnings

[[Page 15850]]

limitation was finally repealed. That was an important part of tax 
relief for an important part of my constituency, our senior citizens. 
There is more work to do there.
  We want to also repeal the 1993 tax increase on Social Security which 
was imposed by the Clinton administration and the Democratic Congress 
when it controlled the House and the Senate, and Vice President Gore is 
always proud to remind everyone that he had to cast the deciding vote. 
This was the 1993 tax increase which, among other things, imposes a tax 
rate of up to 85 percent on the Social Security earnings of our senior 
citizens. This is wrong and it ought to be repealed. If and when we do 
it, I will call upon the President to sign that.
  We will probably send to him a repeal of the Spanish-American War era 
telephone tax. I think we can safely do this. The war has been over now 
for some time. We don't need to fund the Spanish-American War anymore. 
Like many other taxes and programs in Washington, once they are 
instituted, it is very difficult to ever get rid of them.
  We are finally going to take the step to do that, as we did with the 
marriage penalty, as we did with the estate tax, as we did with the 
Social Security earnings limit. We are going to repeal this tax, as 
well, and call upon the President to sign this.
  We have not been doing nothing. We have been doing something, 
something very worthwhile for the American people. I ask the President 
to reconsider his threat to veto these important tax cuts. Now, his 
argument is, maybe we can't afford it; it is a lot of money--this after 
receiving news that our tax surplus is going to be in the trillions of 
dollars--not billions, not hundreds of billions, but trillions of 
dollars. This is not a budget surplus; this is a tax surplus. It is a 
tax surplus because the taxes we have imposed on the American people 
bring in far more money than we should or can spend. I say ``can'' 
because, of course, Congress has the capacity to spend an unlimited 
amount of money.
  We have set some standards in the Republican-controlled Congress. We 
have said we are not going to touch a dime of the Social Security 
surplus. The Social Security surplus is much larger than the non-Social 
Security surplus. This is the money that comes in as a result of the 
payment of our FICA taxes. Those are far greater than the need to pay 
the benefits under the Social Security program right now. And we are 
applying every dime of the Social Security surplus to a reduction of 
our Federal debt. That is why our Federal debt is being reduced so 
dramatically now.
  The question is, What should be done with the non-Social Security 
surplus? It does not seem too much to me to return a dime, a dime on a 
dollar of that surplus, in the form of the marriage penalty relief and 
the estate tax relief to the American people. Under the most liberal 
interpretation of how much that would cost--and it is not nearly as 
much as this figure would suggest--but under the most liberal 
interpretation, it would be 10 cents on the dollar of the surplus we 
have.
  It seems to me, since we are collecting more in taxes than we need--
even after huge increases in spending in virtually every program we 
have--it is not too much to return 10 percent of this tax surplus to 
the American people. That is the magnitude of the issue. When President 
Clinton says it costs too much, he is saying the Federal Government 
ought to spend that money, rather then allowing the American people to 
keep this 10 cents on the dollar. That is arrogance of the first 
magnitude. That was one of the concerns my constituents presented to me 
this week.
  The other had to do with missile defense. My constituents understand 
the need to protect America. They understand that Secretary Cohen has 
said we have a threat from North Korea, from Iran. There will be a 
threat from Iran; certainly China has been rattling its sabers these 
days. They understand that there is no way we can prevent an attacking 
missile from landing on the United States today and that it will be at 
least 5 years before we can do that if we proceed as rapidly as we 
possibly can. They are anxious we get on with the job of getting a 
missile defense program in place to protect the American people and to 
prevent other countries from blackmailing the United States from being 
involved in issues around the world in which we know we need to be 
involved.
  This last weekend, there was a successful test--it didn't get much 
publicity--of the Patriot missile against a cruise missile target. This 
is another important component of missile defense. The last national 
missile defense test was a failure. From that, many people have said 
they conclude that there can't possibly be a successful program and we 
ought to just pack up and go home, ignoring the fact that the threat 
exists; also, Mr. President, ignoring something else. There is a phrase 
that has found its way into our jargon these days: ``It is not rocket 
science.'' Mr. President, this is rocket science, and it ain't easy. 
Sometimes it takes some failures in order to get to the successful 
conclusion of a program. There are over 20 tests in this particular 
program scheduled, most of them yet to be conducted. It is rocket 
science. It is hard. But we can do it. The people involved in the 
program are confident of that.
  The failure in this last test, incidentally, was not a failure of any 
of the high technology. It was one of those quirks that can occur when 
something you have done hundreds of times before just did not happen to 
work on this particular occasion. But it was not a failure of the high-
tech end of this missile defense program which we need to test to make 
sure it can work.
  To my colleagues who may have been concerned as a result of the 
failure of this last test, I suggest to them we stay the course and 
continue the program as outlined by the Department of Defense, which I 
believe will be successful and will enable us to deploy a missile 
defense to protect the American people.
  Final point. There are many who have urged the President to defer a 
decision, that he not make a decision. We have already made that 
decision when we passed the Missile Defense Act and President Clinton 
signed it into law. That decision was to deploy a national missile 
defense as soon as technologically feasible, and we believe it will be 
feasible. Therefore, we need to move forward with the program. That is 
why the President should not defer a decision. He should make a 
decision to go forward, but he should, of course, defer the specifics 
as to exactly what that program is for the next President to decide. 
That can be done, but there should be no backing away from going 
forward, and that is the decision the President should make.
  Ultimately, of course, I think Governor Bush is correct. There will 
need to be not just one element of a system but, rather, the 
flexibility to deploy a multilayered defense for the American people 
which involves both land-based assets as well as sea-based assets and 
space-based assets. You need satellites to detect and track the 
trajectory of a missile. You can also be benefited by other assets in 
space. Certainly a missile defense would be augmented very well with 
sea-based capability, which could, under certain circumstances, even 
have a boost-phase intercept capability because of its proximity to the 
launching of the offensive missile.
  All of this is well understood. I believe the Congress should stay 
the course and urge the administration to go forward with its decision. 
Of course, the details will be left to the next administration, but we 
should not signal we are not willing to protect the American people 
from missile attack.
  Mr. President, you mentioned, in closing, we are hoping to take up 
the permanent trade relations with China toward the end of this week. I 
very strongly support the efforts by Senator Thompson to ensure that at 
the same time we are moving to open our trade with China, we make it 
clear to China that there are certain things which are inimical to 
peace around the world and certainly to our security. Included in that 
is China's proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the 
missiles to deliver those weapons to other countries, countries of 
concern--the so-

[[Page 15851]]

called rogue nations of Iran and Iraq and North Korea. It may also be 
proliferating to other countries that we would prefer not have large 
arsenals of these weapons.
  The bottom line is that although we can and should move forward in 
developing closer and more robust trade with China, we cannot allow 
that kind of activity to suggest to China that we do not care about our 
own national security and about peace and stability and security in the 
world. That is why I think it is appropriate for us to also adopt the 
Thompson legislation which will make it clear that, for those who are 
involved in the proliferation, sanctions will result. I am hoping we 
can take that up at the end of this week.
  Those are concerns that were expressed by my constituents this 
weekend. I told them I would share them with my colleagues. I have now 
done that and I appreciate the indulgence of the Presiding Officer, 
whose time I have been taking.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kyl). Without objection, it is so ordered.

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